


faith in a cape and a hood

by tosca1390



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-29
Updated: 2012-10-29
Packaged: 2017-11-17 07:40:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/549182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tosca1390/pseuds/tosca1390
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>She dreams of fighting off wolves alone, and winning.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	faith in a cape and a hood

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [The HP Next Gen Comment Fic-A-Thon](http://hondagirll.livejournal.com/115949.html) at 's journal. Prompt: Lily Luna, _they call her Little Red_.

*

Lily lets her hair grow long down her back, red and shining in the sunlight. She fancies it as a cape, like one of those Muggle superheroes Grandpa likes to read about. On her long skinny legs he races her brothers through the corridors of Grimmauld Place and beats them. She has her father’s knees and her mother’s eyes and is the prankster of the family. Her name implies a softness she doesn’t feel she has, so she demands a change one night at dinner. 

“I don’t want to be called Lily anymore,” she says, elbows perched on the table. She’s eight now, and feels old enough for the decision.

Jamie rolls his eyes and tucks into his bangers and mash. “How about brat?” he mutters.

She pokes her tongue out at him. Ever since his Hogwarts letter arrived, he’s become insufferable. 

Dad clears his throat, but she can see Mum ducking her head with a smile. 

“What’d you want to be called then?” Al asks at her left, watching her carefully. 

She thinks about it for a moment. “You pick.”

“I’ll have to think about it,” he says, and goes back to his plate. She’s confident he’ll come up with something good. Al’s smart like that. 

Later, Dad tucks her in and picks a book for them to read together, as they do nearly every night. Dad is quiet most of the time, so when he reads, it’s a gift she never wants to give up. “So, why not Lily any longer?” he asks, frowning at her bookshelves.

Curled up on her side, she brushes the hair away from her face. Her room glows orange in the candlelight. “Too girly. I just don’t think it’s me,” she says plainly. “I want a brave name.”

“I think Lily is a brave name,” he says as he sits on the edge of her bed. _Little Red Riding Hood_ rests in his hands. “That’s why we gave it to you.”

She wrinkles her nose and pats the book. “I don’t think so,” she mutters. 

He smooths a hand over her hair. “It’s up to you.”

Then, he starts the story, with Little Red’s cape and basket on their way to Grandmother’s house. His voice is even and gentle. She always falls asleep before the end of the story. 

The next morning, Albus bounds in and jumps on the end of her bed, waking her roughly. 

“Hey!” she grumbles, rubbing at her eyes. The spring sunlight is bright through her window. “Stop it!”

“Little Red,” he proclaims. “How about that?”

She sits up in bed, hair a tangled mess at the ends. “Little?”

“You’re only eight,” he says with a shrug.

“And you’re only ten, you prat,” she says, pouting.

“You said I could pick. That’s what I pick.”

Huffing, she falls back onto the bed, hair flying up around her. “ _Fine_.”

*

_Little Red_ catches on. 

Soon all the cousins are calling her that. Teddy addresses all his notes to her as that, and it makes her stomach all warm and jumpy when she gets a note from him. The name makes Mum laugh. Even Dad seems to like it. 

“Little Red Riding Hood is our favorite, after all,” he says one night after James has gone off to Hogwarts. The big house is quieter, and Albus has retreated into his books, in preparation for his own Hogwarts letter months from now. She’s smarting with the aftereffects of being left behind. No one should be allowed to have adventures without her. 

“She’s brave,” she murmurs, sleepy after a long day of school. She likes going to Muggle school; every year is like an adventure into the unknown. When she’s eleven, she’ll be sad to leave it behind.

“Going out into the woods all by herself? Yeah, I reckon so,” Dad says, something soft and faraway in his voice. 

She watches him, curled up on her side. “Does the wolf win?”

“If you stayed awake through the end, you’d know,” he teased, smoothing a hand over her head. 

“Daaaad,” she whines. 

“No, he doesn’t,” he says. “The woodsman saves her.”

Lily shuts her eyes then. That night, she dreams of fighting off wolves alone, and winning.

*

The professors say she’s fearless. Madame Johnson-Weasley says she hasn’t seen a flyer like her since her mother, absolutely careless of Beaters and Bludgers. She likes the adrenaline, likes the speed and the brush of wind through her hair. She flies with her hair loose whenever she can, a long red curtain trailing behind her like a wave. 

“Be gentle with them, Little Red,” Teddy advises her on her sixteenth birthday. They sit alone together on the front steps of Grimmauld Place, watching the Muggles pass by completely unaware. 

“With who?” she asks. She can’t stop staring at his mouth. It must be the hormones. 

He smiles at her. It curves all the angles of his long face. A shaggy fall of burgundy fringe sweeps across his forehead. “All the boys who’ll be all over you.”

She can blame her flush on the June afternoon. Sweat curls down her spine. “I don’t know that I want anything to do with them,” she says.

Teddy laughs, and the sound sweeps over her, curling her toes. “Like I said, be gentle.”

“Don’t have to be gentle with you,” she says boldly.

He blinks at her, something darkening in his gaze. “Well, that’s because I can handle you. I like you just how you are,” he says after a spell. 

Her heart swells up hard against her ribs; she can barely breathe to look at him after that. 

In sixth year, she has her first boyfriend and her first breakup. On the Quidditch pitch after the final match with Ravenclaw, she kisses Lorcan, because he’s tall and blond and lovely and has large hands. After, every time he sees her, he gets a dreamy look to his eyes, soft and pliable; she finds it cloying after a month. He carries her books, fetches her tea, and it makes her feel weak in ways she doesn’t like. So, as gently as she can, she breaks it off. 

Perhaps she wasn’t as gentle as she could have been. 

“Aren’t you acting a bit out of your head?” Al says her first week home for the summer holidays. 

She plaits her hair back into two long braids down her back, glancing at him in the mirror as he sits on her bed. James is off in a row with Mum and Dad over his changing careers (again). They can hear them all the way up on the second level. 

“I don’t want someone who’s trying to coddle me,” she said with a shrug. 

Al sits cross-legged, his elbows on his knees. He looks tired but happy, more filled-out than she remembered from the Christmas holidays. The Department of Mysteries agrees with him. “I reckon no one’s ever tried to coddle you. You’re a whirlwind, Little Red.”

Leaning back in her chair, she watches her reflection in the mirror. “Maybe. I’d rather just be me, if it’s all right with you lot,” she says tartly. 

“Oi, if you don’t want to date Lorcan, don’t. It’s up to you. I reckon it’ll be hard for you to find someone who isn’t going to try to open doors for you, though,” he says, holding up his hands in supplication. 

That’s exactly what she doesn’t want. 

She dreams always of the independence of the woods, of the cape of red she wears proudly. The woodsman fights at her side, not in front or behind. He’s always faceless, but his hair is a different color every time. 

*

She looks to her parents and sees a glimmer of what she wants.

Her mum is strong and tart and playful. She makes her dad laugh, makes his brow furrow, and sometimes just generally befuddles him. Meanwhile, he makes her smile and takes her on adventures and gives it right back to her; it feels like a partnership. 

“You like that, don’t you?” Lily asks her dad one hot August day as they wander Muggle London. It’s a tradition of theirs to do so when she’s home for the summer holidays. He likes the simplicity and the crowded streets where he is only another body; she likes the adventure and the speed of the cars and double-deckers. 

“Like what?” he asks, an arm slung around her shoulders. The weight of it pulls on her hair. 

“That Mum is... well, Mum.”

They duck out of the way of a crowd of loud America tourists and slip down a side alley, full of funky hat and clothing shops. “I do. Or I wouldn’t have married her.”

Her eyes catch on a pair of black leather boots; completely impracticable and utterly attractive. “Do you think I’m a whirlwind?”

He smooths a hand over her braided hair. She takes comfort in the familiar gesture. “I reckon you’ll find someone to keep up with you when you’re ready. You’re young still.”

“Your mum was named Lily,” she says after a moment of window-peering. Her heart is set on those boots. 

“Yes, she was.”

“She was Head Girl. Doubt that’s going to happen for me,” she says with a grimace. 

Dad pats her back. The sun is strong on their shoulders. “You do just fine, Lil. I reckon you’ve got something of her in you. She didn’t take anything from anyone.”

Looking over at him, she frowns. “How do you know?”

He smiles slightly, adjusting his glasses on the perch of his nose. “Just do. You’ve got my mum and your mum, and not enough of me to cause too much damage.”

She rather likes the idea of that. And the boots.

Dad makes a face, but buys them for her anyway.

*

“Hey there, Red!”

Lily grins at Teddy as he stands in her bedroom doorway. She is 18, he’s nearly 28, and she can’t help but like what she sees. 

“So it’s Red now?” 

He grins, his long frame leaning against the door. He’s summer-colored this evening, hair a deep sunset-purple and eyes dark blue. “Well you’re not so little anymore.”

Slowly, she shakes her hair back from her shoulders. She can feel his gaze on her. “True enough. Here to break me free from utter boredom?” she asks. 

“If you’re allowed out with an old man like myself, absolutely.”

She stands and stretches, thinking of her black leather boots. “I reckon I can swing it.”

The smile reaches his eyes this time. He looks happier than he has in a year, since his break-up with Victoire. “Good. I’ll visit with the folks, meet me in the entrance hall.”

Tonight, she’s Little Red no more. She’s going into the wild and taking down the wolves and she’ll save the woodsman, not the other way around. 

*

It takes a drink or two and a little more of her stored-up Gryffindor bravery than she would have liked, but in a dark corner of their favorite Muggle pub, Lily leans over and kisses Teddy. 

He tastes dark and sweet, like all the adventures she wants from life. Gooseflesh erupts all over her skin and her toes curl in her boots. Guitar plays jaggedly in the background. After a moment of terror, where she feels alone in the wilderness, he kisses back and she nearly sings in relief. Her pulse jumps in her throat. 

His hand, slim and warm, lands on her thigh. “Wait-”

“I don’t wait,” she whispers back. Her brothers are somewhere at the bar, getting another round. She has no more time to spare. 

In the dim lighting, she can tell his face is flushed. His hair is caught mid-color, between purple and black. The fingers on her thigh flinch and she scoots closer in the booth to him. 

“This is a bad idea,” he says, voice low and deep in this throat. 

Slowly she smiles, her hand falling to his leg. “A lot of great adventures start out that way.”

His gaze is stuck to her mouth. She wets her lips. “Bloody hell, you’re a handful,” he mutters. 

Laughing, she kisses him again. She’s bold and brave and wants this, wants _him_. 

“Your brothers will murder me. Your parents--your _dad_ \--I can’t--”

She just kisses him and kisses him, warm and wet and open, until he clears his throat and they resume a normal distance from one another. Her brothers approach and reclaim their seats, oblivious. 

That night, she dreams of Teddy and wide open spaces, all hers for the taking. 

She is never _little_ again.

*


End file.
